Creating DVD/VCD Photo Slide Shows for Your Mac

Editor' note: If you're not an iPhoto fan but you'd still like to organize your photos into slide shows burned on CD, Wei-Meng Lee offers an alternative application that handles just that.

Ever since I bought a digital camera two years ago, I have been taking photos every
time I go on overseas trips. If you're like me, then you probably have lots of photos
to develop when you return from a trip. And often you want to share them with your friends
and relatives.

For friends who are computer literate, I usually send them the photos
via email, or simply cut a CD and send it to them. It's the less-computer-savvy folks
whom I have problems with. Developing hundreds of photos
for those relatives and friends is not practical, as that would still cost quite a
bit despite the drop in cost for digital printing. So, I thought the best way
to solve this problem would be to create a DVD (or VCD, a digital video format popular
in Asian countries like Singapore) and send it to friends (this is much cheaper), since
most people have a DVD/VCD player at home. And with DVD/VCD, you can
attach music to accompany your photos, which really adds to the ambience. (iPhoto lets you create slide show CDs to play in newer DVD players, but I was looking for an alternative.) So I
went hunting for another software package that let me do just that.

The no-frills Ulead DVD PictureShow for Mac turned out to be the answer to my quest. Therefore, in this article I will show you how to cut all of your digital photos into a
DVD/VCD so you can send the disc to friends and relatives (and, of course, create some for your own
archiving and enjoyment).

Ulead DVD PictureShow for Mac

You can download a trial version of the Ulead DVD PictureShow for Mac from
www.ulead.co.uk/dps_mac/runme.htm.
The trial version is fully functional, except
that it limits the number of photos you can create per disc. The full version costs $29 while the upgrade is $22. (Prices are rounded up.)

Once you've downloaded and installed the trial version, double-click on the DVD
PictureShow icon in the Applications folder (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Ulead DVD PictureShow for Mac application.

When the DVD PictureShow application is loaded, you should see the window shown
in Figure 2. Creating a photo slideshow is a simple three-step process: Organize, Make Menu, and Burn. By default, the first slide show has already been created for you. A slide
show is like a folder where you group your photos into categories. For example, one slide
show may contain your graduation photos, while another may contain your birthday party
photos.

The trial version of the DVD PictureShow limits you to a maximum of 10 slide shows
and maximum of 10 images per slide show. Figure 4 shows the slide show that I
created ("Rhode Island") and its associated photos (I took this while I was in Rhode
Island in November 2002 while working with O'Reilly Media). You can drag and drop the
images to change their sequencing.

Figure
4. Creating my first slide show.

You can create additional slide shows by clicking on the + New Slideshow button located
on the lower left of the window. Figure 5 shows that I have created three slide shows; you can also adjust the time delay in displaying the next photo. You have a choice of
making a VCD or DVD and the amount of storage required is displayed at the bottom of
the window. Finally, you can also attach some background music to your photo
collections. This feature is really cool.